February 2019

CTFusion is a startup company in Seattle, Washington that was created in 2015 to commercialize fusion research at the University of Washington. It builds on almost thirty years of research and development at the U of W Helicity Injected Torus - Steady Inductive laboratory funded by U.S.

Sometimes commercial nuclear fusion seems like the end of the rainbow. It was always “forty years” away no matter how much time passed. Today at least six companies in the U.S. alone are working on practical nuclear fusions systems and some say they are only ten years away from commercial reactors.

The United Nations has charged that Israel has been burying radioactive nuclear waste in the occupied Golan Heights. Antonio Guterres is the U.N. Secretary General. He recently submitted a report for the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Fortieth Session which will begin in Geneva next week.

I have blogged before about the importance of the molybdenum-99 radioisotope. This radioisotope is used to produce technetium-99m for about four fifths of nuclear imaging procedures for disease diagnosis. Mo-99 is produced primarily in research reactors and, since it has a half life of sixty-six hours, it cannot be stockpiled.

There is a great deal of interest today in what are called small modular reactors (SMR) in the nuclear industry. A small modular reactor is defined as a nuclear fission reactor that produces three hundred million watts of electricity or less. It is hoped that manufacture of these SMRs in factories will improve safety and lower costs.

Problems with mining uranium do not get much coverage in the media. However, they pose a very serious threat to the environment both during the mining operation and for decades after the mine has been shut down.